Warren Zevon's final recording is bittersweet

In a voice as gentle as a father cradling his newborn child, the dying man sings, "if I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while."

It's a beautiful moment, and a heartbreaking one, near the end of Warren Zevon's "The Wind," to be released Tuesday on Artemis Records. On Aug. 28 of last year, Chicago-born Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an inoperable lung cancer, and given only three months to live. Instead, the 56-year-old songwriter -- resting in his Los Angeles home and not granting interviews -- defied medical expectations and survived long enough to write and complete a final record, an alternately harrowing, hilarious and deeply moving consideration of love, death and dying.

Joined by an all-star array of musician friends, including Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Don Henley, Zevon recorded most of "The Wind" at a furious pace from September through Christmas. The project then stalled as his stamina and stalwart attitude -- displayed in his final public appearance as the sole guest on the Oct. 30 broadcast of "The Late Show With David Letterman" -- gave way to fatigue and depression. But by April his mental and physical condition had improved enough for him to finish it during recording sessions in his home.

Zevon's determination to spend his final days saying goodbye in song surprised even those closest to him. "I never thought he would do anything but be with his family," says Jorge Calderon, Zevon's friend of 30 years and longtime collaborator, who co-wrote and co-produced "The Wind." "I thought he was going to go on a trip around the world, do something when you know there's not much time, go to Mexico, stay by the beach."

`A true artist'

When Zevon instead asked Calderon to help him make a final record, "that was scary, but I respected him so much. I thought this is a true artist. With death looming, he wants to make art. . . . To write songs about dealing with mortality, you have to be brave to do that."

"You're given a choice," says Zevon's son Jordan. "You can make a decision to deal with it in a way that's not going to be productive, [or] in a way that makes you happy about how you deal with it and makes it a little easier for the people around you.

"I think that's the big lesson there -- you can take an approach where people can look back and gain something from it or you can be lost, and the latter isn't going to do much to teach people about life or help them move on."

The choice Zevon made transformed his death sentence into a revitalizing experience. "He was so exhilarated with the creative process that he was into," Calderon reports. "He's a writer, [and] when you're writing a song, it's like having a baby, it's such joy. We had conversations that [his] creativity was keeping him alive longer than those doctors said." (Zevon also learned during the course of the recording that his daughter Ariel was pregnant with twins, his first grandchildren, and he has lived long enough to see their birth.)

The sense of determination to find meaning and purpose in the face of death runs throughout "The Wind." The record's mood is life-affirming rather than gloomy, even as Zevon unflinchingly confronts his illness from the record's first line, "Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me," to one of its last, "These wheels keep turning, but they're running out of steam."

It's hardly the typical subject of a rock music record, but Zevon, of course, has never been a typical rock songwriter. "Death has been a pervasive theme in everything he's ever done," observes Zevon's manager, Brigette Barr, in "Keep Me in Your Heart," a documentary of the recording of "The Wind" that VH1 begins broadcasting Sunday.

Pulp fiction approach

While Zevon has always been highly regarded among critics and fellow musicians (Bob Dylan performed several of Zevon's songs during his tour last fall), he was more of a cult figure than a commercial success. 1978's "Excitable Boy" went platinum, but 2000's "Life'll Kill Ya' sold just 60,000 copies and 2002's "My Ride's Here" sold just 33,000 copies.

Until now, Zevon's musical approach had taken the form of wildly hilarious, pulp fiction-indebted songs. His devilish perspective first drew widespread attention with "Excitable Boy," the record that won him critical praise and an enduring cult following for such twisted tales as "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" (about a mercenary soldier turned vengeful ghost), and his novelty hit "Werewolves of London."

That gallows humor continued through much of his work, including "Life'll Kill Ya," and "My Ride's Here," on which Zevon imagined himself watching the apocalypse while sitting in a hotel lobby with Jesus Christ and John Wayne.

"Dad's never been one to dwell in the banal," Jordan Zevon says. "It's a fascinating topic that he chose because he likes getting emotion out of people, he didn't want to just write some placid love song."

With "The Wind," ironic fascination with death as an abstract concept gave way to grappling with it as an impending certainty. "He actually delved into it with a more serious take on it," Calderon reflects. "This one was a truer-to-life look at all this stuff, without being tongue-in-cheek or sarcastic."

There are still chills to be found on "The Wind," as Zevon repeatedly sings "open up" over the chorus of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and urges on an all-star chorus chanting like a parade of ghouls on "Prison Grove."

Instead of his past outlandishness, though, Zevon sets the tone for "The Wind" by wryly reflecting on his past and present circumstances on the record's opening song, "Dirty Life and Times." He also bares his soul with aching vulnerability on ballads such as "Please Stay," as he sings "we'll never know until we try to find the other side of goodbye," while Emmylou Harris provides gorgeous harmony.

Finale's tenderness

That tenderness reaches an extraordinary peak on the record's finale, "Keep Me in Your Heart," the first song Zevon began writing after receiving his diagnosis and the last song he sang for the record. It's as much a promise to remain a part of the ones he loves as a plea to be remembered by them, and in the VH1 documentary they're with Zevon as he sings, with Calderon sitting alongside him on the couch while Ariel and a moist-eyed Barr watch nearby.

"He sang it beautifully," Calderon says. "Coming out of [his setbacks at the beginning of the year], he had this deep soul in his voice that came from the suffering he'd been through."

Zevon's soft side has been part of his music ever since such "Excitable Boy"-era songs as "Tenderness on the Block" and "Accidentally Like a Martyr," but it's been obscured by the outlaws, soldiers, madmen and bruisers that populate many of his other tales.

"He's a very sensitive guy, a very loving guy. He's a guy that I have been able to talk about anything with," Calderon says. "That's something that people don't see because they think he's the werewolf of London."

"That's always more fun to embrace," Jordan Zevon notes. "Everyone wants to grab onto that defiant, evil persona that you can find in there. People want to live vicariously through the '65 Mustang going down the highway to the Mexican border with guns blazing."

Not all of "The Wind" finds Zevon going gently into that good night. His wicked sense of humor is still present as he throws off zingers such as "even the Lhasa apso seems to be ashamed" amid the havoc he and Springsteen wreak on "Disorder in the House." There's defiance, too, as he announces, "I don't need your pity" on "Rub Me Raw" while Joe Walsh plays the nastiest slide guitar this side of Hound Dog Taylor.

Throughout this range of emotions and moods, the one constant is the nakedness of Zevon's writing and singing. "It's so honest and sincere," Calderon says. "That's what's so great about this record. It has a lot of feeling. Warren's records have always had some of that, but this has more. It's so direct."

"There's a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done," Zevon sings on "Keep Me in Your Heart." With "The Wind," Zevon has addressed the one certainty common to everyone, offering not only comfort and inspiration in the face of death, but a bittersweet celebration of the preciousness of life.